FORG1VEN Suspension from League Championship Series

Trash talking isn’t anything new, especially not in the world of competitive gaming, but is it something you deserve to lose your job over? Gambit Gaming’s FORG1VEN certainly has to be asking himself that, with his recent suspension from the League Championship Series for his overly toxic behavior in the community.

This isn’t your average suspension for a game or two FORG1VEN has been suspended for the next four games his team plays, this all do to complaints from his off stage conduct. Over the last month he was reported in over 70% of all games he played with 90% of those who reported saying it was for toxicity. While with no specific examples of his toxicity we’ve all seen how bad it gets, players brutalizing those who don’t know what to buy or what builds fit the meta. While it’s understandable to be frustrated with a teammate who hasn’t figured everything out it’s extremely harmful to how those looking in take the the communities behaviour as a whole.

From Riot Games’ perspective if they were to let a thing like this go unpunished they’d be stoking the fire of complaints they receive from new players even higher than it is already with the steep learning curve it takes to become adequate at the game as a hard enough challenge for newcomers. While unclear who his rage was directed towards league has one of the odder communities who tend to be more angry towards allies than enemies. The real punishment is that without one of their star players Gambit Gaming is going to have a tougher time than ever to progress in the EU LCS. Losing a team member in any event is hard, this is especially difficult when you consider Gambit Gamings two substitutes have no experience in such a large tournament environment.

Many people are in the camp that disagree with the ruling, considering it too harsh but players have received far worse in the past. While Riot holds its community to high standards the professional players are expected to be especially behaved as they are role models for the entire community.

Thusly they are purged from public eye if they don’t represent the companies morals regardless of fan favorites. Team manager Dmitry Sukhanov had this to say, “this kind of punishment harms remaining players and our organization even more than a player in question, especially given the circumstances.” Referring to the investigations timing right before the recruitment cutoff for substitutes and players on the 13th of july, only hearing of the full verdict on the 21st extremely short notice as week 9 of EU LCS starts on the 23rd. It’s no easy task to prep a substitute before a game and with matches starting up again soon it’ll be nothing short of a miracle for Gambit Gaming to recover from this crushing decision.

Certainly a tough situation but here’s hoping they can get back on their feet in time to offer a good show to fans that have already bought tickets expecting them to be in primed condition.